Former NDP chair says opposition will not be easy for ULP

Former chairman of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Linton Lewis, has cited the party’s experience, saying opposition will not be easy for the Unity Labour Party (ULP).

After 25 years in office, the ULP was sent into opposition on Nov. 27 as the electorate handed the NDP a 14-1 victory.

“It is not easy, though,” Lewis, who was a panellist on the national broadcast of the election results, said during the broadcast after the preliminary results were announced.

After almost 17 years in office, the NDP was sent into opposition in March 2001, with three of the eight seats that it held in the previous Parliament, two more than the ULP won in 2025.

“It is not an easy experience, because I can imagine sometimes people are reluctant to associate with you. This is a time when they feel they’re far more comfortable if they keep their distance and perhaps gravitate towards the other side. And you sometimes become very lonely.”

Lewis said this does not relate only to the Parliament, noting that the ULP has just lost an election “with someone who was just remarkable at the top”.

Former prime minister Ralph Gonsalves (now the opposition leader), who has been representing North Central Windward since 1994, was the only ULP candidate to win a seat in the Nov. 27 polls.

Lewis said that the ULP will now have to “pull those people together, those young and upcoming politicians together, who may well think that ‘I can’t take 24 years.’ ‘Oh I can’t take 17 years’”.

He noted that Vincentian electors normally give the government a long time in office. The NDP was in office for 17 years, from 1984 to 2001, while the ULP remained in office for 24 years.

“Are they prepared to take 17 years? Are they prepared to take 24 years? And it’s not going to be an easy experience.

“Yeah, it is not easy. And every day you think of what next, because it was just not only a clean sweep, you had a tremendous number of persons who seem to have voted against the ULP.”

The NDP won 10,055 more popular votes than the ULP, amassing 37,207 ballots compared to the ULP’s 27,152, according to the final results released by the Electoral Office.

“It’s a situation which not only the rank and file came out, but you ask yourself the question: why did the people at a certain level come out against the ULP the way they did?

“You can anticipate that the rank and file, for the most part, to be in the majority who will come out. But why those at a certain level come out and vote the way they dd. I mean, is there disgruntlement?” said Lewis, who fell out of favour with the NDP sometime after quitting as party chairman in 2016.

In August, two months before Vincentians would go to the polls, Gonsalves told ULP supporters, as he had done in 2020, to silence their complains until after the vote.

“Between now and when the elections are called, I don’t want to hear one Labour man or one Labour woman grumble,” he said in Fitz Hughes.

“We will grumble after we win. You hear what I’m telling you? We will grumble after we win. But between now and then, no grumbling; no complaint.”

Then, two days before the election, he pleaded with former party supporters to return to Labour.

Lewis criticised the NDP and endorsed the ULP four days before the Nov. 27 vote. However, as the gave his immediate reaction to the election results, he said:

“The rank and file alone cannot bring about this result. There must have been people at a higher level. And what would have caused them to feel this sense of disgruntlement? What would have caused them to either stay away from the polls or to vote in that way?

“We can understand that the rank and file, they’ve been there for 17 years, and they are quite a lot of people in the New Democratic Party I know who have remained with the party, notwithstanding the trials and the tribulations. I see them now at meetings.”

Lewis said it is now these people’s time to be “jubilant, to come out and vote overwhelmingly.

“The question is, those who have been elevated, those who have benefited, and those who have demonstrated to all and sundry that the Unity Labour Party has been the party of a country, what could have been the reason for those persons to either stay away or vote against the Unity Labour Party?”

In his four failed bids to win a seat on an NDP ticket, Lewis ran once in West St. George and three times in East St. George.

“This is not just a rank-and-file vote. You look at West St. George, for example. Look at East St. George. Those constituencies have a certain type of persons living in them, as you know. And look at the results. Especially in West St. George, for example, he beat Curtis King by about 1,000 votes.”

In West St. George, the NDP’s Kaschaka Cupid, a first-time candidate, defeated the ULP’s Curtis King, a retired educator, who was seeking a second term in office by 1,081 votes.

Cupid amassed 2,903 votes compared to King’s 1,822, while Kenna Questelles, an independent candidate, received 52 votes.

Lewis described Cupid as “calm”, “cool” and a “likable fellow”, who he said he knows very well.

“… but he has not been out there. Then you have Lavern Velox beating the likes of Camillo in the way that she did in every single polling station.”

Laverne Gibson-Velox defeated Camillo Gonsalves, who was minister of finance in the last ULP administration and was seeking a third term in office.

Gibson-Velox received 3,395 votes – 1,043 more than Gonsalves, thereby unseating one of the heirs-apparent of the ULP on her second bid, having failed in 2020.

Gibson-Velox’s 2025 performance was better than Gonsalves on his first victory in 2015, when he defeated Lewis by garnering 3,135 votes, the most in that election, compared to Lewis’ 2,528.

Like Gonsalves had done in 2015, Gibson-Velox received the most votes in the 2025 polls.

Lewis said there is a demographic in the St. Georges, “a certain type of people who live in those constituencies, who have elevated…  There must be something that would have turned those people away in their numbers”.

He, however, said it could not be infrastructural development, “because we’re seeing them there. What is it?”

People likely to distance themselves from ULP

Lewis said he had spoken to two people who has told him that it is likely that people are going to distance themselves from the ULP “or be reluctant to make themselves present”.

Lewis said he had seen this as a young person coming into the NDP, when the party was about to lose.

“And I’m seeing the same thing now. You can bet yourself that you’re not going to have certain people raising their head, exposing themselves… That’s what’s going to happen, and that’s precisely what has happened, because I lived it. I know what it is like.”

Lewis said he knew precisely what was going on in the minds of ULP supporters.

“… because the population is going to make sure that they understand who is in office in the same way when the ULP came into office by that large majority, the same way the NDP supporters felt as if they were seriously controlled and were under subjection.

“So, it’s not going to be an easy time … The question is this, will the young people who the ULP brought on stream recently, will they be so grounded in politics and so loyal?

“… Have they been grounded? Will they withstand the rigours of politics?” he said, adding that there were time after the NDP lost in 2021 when the party could not have a quorum when conducting its affairs.

“… even when you’re not victimised, you feel that way just by the fact that you cannot see any way through.”

Lewis sang ULP praises 4 days before polls

Lewis endorsed the ULP four days before the election, singing its praises on a number of matters and criticising the NDP.

“You see what the ULP has done, you can see and you can feel. And these are things that NDP not addressing,” Lewis said.

His “message to Vincentians” was that all politics is personal.

“And then when you add all those things together, collectively, you have a better life. Because no matter what anyone say, people look at people’s personal lives, how many persons’ lives were improved,” Lewis said in an interview with St. Vincent Times’ Ernesto Crooke.

“You look at the policies, you look at the programmes, you look at the plans of both parties. Well, I’ve not seen any from NDP as yet, but I’ve had an opportunity to look at the ULP’s manifesto,” Lewis said in the interview that was published four days after the NDP launched it manifesto.

“I’ve had an opportunity to see the things that they’ve done. I can’t criticise any of them, because they all create employment for Vincentians. They’ve all made Vincentian lives better. And I’m looking forward to see if NDP can publish something better than the ULP,” he said.